When trading with financial instruments, there is usually a difference between the buying price and the selling price, a difference referred to as the “spread”. For example, if the buying price for a certain instrument is ninety and the selling price is ninety-three, the spread will be three. Normally, trades will be made at prices that are within the spread.
In a system for trading with financial instruments, a problem can arise if a trade is made within the spread, but outside the system, a so-called “off-exchange” trade. This can for example occur if two brokers agree on a trade within the spread, but then report the trade to the system at a point in time when the market has moved, which can happen if, for example, the buying or selling price has changed since the trade was agreed upon. In this case the reported trade can appear to have taken place outside the current spread, namely if the market movement was such that the current spread is outside the price of the reported trade. If this happens, the off-exchange trade will, for one thing, influence the statistics for that particular instrument in an undesired manner.
Within present systems for trading with financial instruments, the operator of the system can define whether or not trades which are made within the spread should be accepted by the system or not, and if they are accepted, whether or not the information relating to that trade should be disseminated to users of the system (e.g. brokers). An example of the problem that has been explained above could be that the present spread is at ninety to ninety-three, and an off-exchange trade at ninety-one is agreed upon between to brokers. The trade can be agreed upon before lunch, and then reported to the system after lunch. The market price for the same instrument after lunch may have moved so that the instrument is traded at a spread between ninety-three to ninety five. Thus, when a trade is reported at ninety-one, this report may influence the statistics in an undesired manner, which in the example, the report may wrongly influence the statistics downwards.
There is thus a need for a method for use in a system for trading of financial instruments where reports for off-exchange trades can be received by the system and communicated to users of the system, for example brokers, without negatively influencing the statistics in the system.